Archives for October 2010

Transportation

Over at WebUr­ban­ist, Steve Lev­en­stein gives us a heav­i­ly illus­trat­ed overview of the con­stant­ly chang­ing art on the cars at the Cadil­lac Ranch. I didn’t know just how inten­tion­al the invi­ta­tion to pass­ing graf­fi­ti artists was.

Dis­cov­ery­HD brings us a 2 part doc­u­men­tary on the Cafe Rac­er sub-culture. Air­ing Oct 13 and 14. Fire up the Beta­max Ethel.

For all I know this web page is adver­tis­ing bogus “like a tiger” nos­trums. It’s in Japan­ese, I don’t feel like deal­ing with the trans­la­tor. I just want you to see the pic­ture of the 70’s era wall of death rid­ers.

Science

The total­ly awe­some adven­ture of two guys, a lit­tle video cam­era, and a heli­um filled weath­er bal­loon. Not quite to infin­i­ty and beyond, but to the edge of space and back. The footage from the flight will make you feel both small com­pared to the vast­ness just out of our reach and proud to be a mem­ber of such a curi­ous species.

Some­what spe­cial­ized and tech­ni­cal, but of inter­est to the pho­tog­ra­phers and web geeks in the group. Google has pro­posed, demo’d, and open sourced for pub­lic use, the exper­i­men­tal new image com­pres­sion tech­nique WebP as an alter­na­tive to the com­mon­ly used jpeg com­pres­sion tech­niques. Your opin­ion on the qual­i­ty of the com­pressed images?

Art, Images, and Design

A new wall por­trait by Vhils for the Nuart show in Nor­way. Cre­at­ed by cut­ting, (drilling, punch­ing, and pound­ing) into the lay­ers of fin­ish on a wall. More infor­ma­tion on Alexan­dre Far­to (aka Vhils) and more walls.

Object of desire — but unavail­able at this moment. Pint Size has a water bot­tle. Pint size appears — inex­plic­a­bly — in the com­ic Ques­tion­able Con­tent.

Practicality-stretching design exer­cis­es are all over the inter­net. Beds that do origa­mi to hide away dur­ing the day, cof­fee tables with inter­est­ing shapes but no place to put a cup or a mag­a­zine, it’s goes on and on. Most of these exist only in ren­der­ing files but once in a while… A swing set like din­ing table and chairs. Um, no drink­ing at this din­ner par­ty, okay?

Two min­utes of Mon­day humor. If it’s rain­ing on you too this morn­ing I hope you find a big guy with an umbrel­la. Man­fred. (Ani­ma­tion — 2:00)